Expecting to fly

2d leg - Bill and Tom after checking in at O'Hare. We head to NY in 2 hrs.

One of the most interesting things at O'Hare was having lunch and our waiter was from Bulgaria -- a young guy who seemed to be out for good times. We told him we were going to Romania and he said "What the hell do you want to go there for?" We talked a bit and the most important thing he seemed to want us to understand was the tremendous resentment that 500 years of Turkish occupation had left. He said his own grandfather had been enslaved by the Ottomans when young. A good reflection of Balkan politics & history to start the trip.

Are you ready?

I'm not ready, but getting close.  Excited but nervous and all that stuff.  Zillion details of packing and trying to get checklists completed at home and work before leaving town.

In two days, three of us will drive to Chicago, spend the night, get on a plane the next morning, fly to New York, get on another plane, fly to Milan, meet the other three guys, get on another plane, and fly to Cluj-Napoca aka Koloszvar.  It's exhausting just writing it -- but then we'll be in Transylvania for nine days.  We'll attempt to answer the musical question: can six men do OK on a long trip without their wives to straighten them out?  I'm guessing it's yes, but we will miss them.  In fact, this will be my longest time apart from Marsha in the last 36 years.  It will be an experience in many dimensions.

I'm not too worried about communicating with the folks there: I enjoy languages, and know people can get along without a lot of common vocabulary.  I expect to use some of my college German.  I do worry about enjoying the food, and not wanting to offend our hosts.  This will not be like in restaurants where we can order.  But part of this trip for me is learning to worry less and let it be.

Sights to see, work to do, people to meet, songs to sing, and one great big hill to climb.  New places, old world culture and new languages.  It's gonna be great! (with the possible exception of cucumbers and/or tripe soup...

How Can I Keep from Singing?

I'm a lucky guy, in lots of ways. But one way of which I am conscious is the ability to make music and sing with people. The last week is a case in point. After our Irish band, Celtic Knot, played a full slate of gigs around St. Patrick's Day (one story from this is on the New Cybrary), I had four nights which included two rehearsals for a folk music gig with friends Doug Wheeler and Barbara Hoffman, a rehearsal for singing Beethoven's Ninth as part of a community choir and then the gig with Doug & Barbara at the Brewed Awakenings coffeehouse. Lucky, lucky to have friends who want to play and sing and a community offering opportunities.

Music is tied up with my spirituality in ways I am still exploring and seeking to understand. Certainly it points to connections with other people and with stories, and a fundamental way of looking at the world, involving beauty, creativity, melody, rhythm and harmony. At a later time, I'll write something particularly about singing the Beethoven, which is a new realm of experience.

Right now, I'm trying to get my backpack guitar and some music ready to take to Transylvania, where some of our pilgrims will share music & I hope I can learn some songs.

Serious business

Barbara, our Asst. Director, brought everybody in the office gifts from the Museum of Science and Industry. She gave me this l'il dragon. Gabby Bear seems glad of the company. Now I have to come up with a good dragon name when I should be getting ready for the Board Planning meeting...

Beggars to God

Near the top of the Spanish Steps, an old woman in black bends over her rosary, a cup before her for alms.

Find a stillness

There's a Transylvanian hymn in our UU hymnal:

Find a stillness, hold a stillness, let the stillness carry me.
Find the silence, hold the silence, let the silence carry me.
In the the spirit, by the spirit, with the spirit giving power,
I will find true harmony.

The song speaks to one of my favorite parts of our weekly services at Fox Valley UU Fellowship: the silent meditation or prayer. The Buddhist gong that rings at the beginning and end carries me in and out of the silence and challenges me to find an inner stillness. I feel that the entire service revolves around this moment of quiet, the eye in the storm of ideas, sights, joys, concerns and sounds.

As it turns out, it's deceptively easy to play a simple version of "Find a stillness" on guitar, so its one of the songs our pilgrim group will take with us to Transylvania. We may even sing it in church there, as three of us have been part of our choir. It seems fitting that we carry this song back to its home, as a bond between our congregations, as the stillness is a common place for us all.

Journey to the East

This blog is actually occasioned by a pending trip to Transylvania. Some men from our church, the Fox Valley Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, will be travelling to Deva, Romania, to help our partner church with some remodelling. But mostly we're going to connect with friends from around the world. It's also a religious pilgrimage: the Citadel in Deva (shown above) is the martyrdom site of Francis David, 1510-1579, an early pioneer of Unitarianism and religious tolerance. It was David who said "We need not think alike to love alike."

The fact that in April (Easter weekend) we climb the hill to the martyrdom site in Citadel sends me echoes of Chaucer:

Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his half cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open ye
(So priketh hem Nature in hir corages),
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
And specially from every shires ende
Of Engelond to Caunterbury they wende,
The hooly blisful martir for to seke,
That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.

We're heading out for to seke straunge strondes, ferne halwes in sondry londes & a martir! (seek strange shores, distant holy places in various lands, and a martyr)

What a long strange trip it's been

This is a blog to report on personal journeys. As the blog description says: "there is a road, no simple highway, between the dawn and the dark of night." So herewith: meditations on the journey, on encounters along the road, particularly about travels undertaken, but musical, spiritual and personal journeys as well.